Regular maintenance of an apparatus is a work required for maintaining performances of the apparatus. Facilities provided with an analyzing device configured to perform analyses of solid substances, liquids, and gases installed therein achieve maintenance of an analyzing performance and preventive maintenance of the apparatus by performing the maintenance at intervals recommended by manufacturers of the apparatuses.
Although the present invention is applicable to various types of analyzing devices, an analyzing device for clinical examinations will be exemplified for description given below. For apparatuses corresponding to specified maintenance apparatuses among medical apparatuses, it is absolutely necessary to perform maintenance of the apparatuses at intervals recommended by manufacturers of the apparatuses and keep records thereof.
Recently, hospitals and laboratories are now suffering financially due to lowering of NHI points. In contrast, medical facilities are required to provide a round-the-clock schedules and service improvement for patients. As support on the side of the laboratories, support on holidays and night-time shifts are in place. However, if an apparatus is installed, the number of personnel is reduced. Since a full-time personnel system cannot be prepared for each of the apparatuses, a plurality of apparatuses are operated by a single stuff and a personnel being short on experience and inexperienced may be tasked with performing the maintenance in many cases. A small number of service engineers are required to manage a large area and specific engineers for the product cannot be staffed in present conditions.
A procedure of maintenance is described in a paper-based manual or in HELP built in an operating unit of the apparatus. An operator performs maintenance according to the procedure described in the manual or the like in the procedures on the item-to-item basis.
The types of the maintenance may mainly be categorized into washing and part replacement. Also, the maintenance includes maintenance to be performed automatically by the apparatus, and items to be performed manually by the operator. Washing includes items which can be performed automatically, and items to be performed manually. The apparatus is capable of storing a record of items to be performed automatically in a storage unit of the apparatus and performing deadline management. There are apparatuses having a function to notify the fact that the performance deadline is close or passed by color or the like and alerting users. Also, some of the apparatuses are configured to prepare a maintenance table including maintenance items to be performed manually and keep a record unlike the automatic items. In such a case, it is necessary to perform the maintenance while checking a condition of measurement of the apparatus so as not to affect measurement of a sample. Also, when the mechanism of the apparatus becomes complicated, the number of maintenance items to be performed is increased and, specifically, for operators being short of experience on the apparatus, it will be hard to perform accurately.
In such circumstances, in Patent Literature 1, there is proposed that a record of operation of the medical apparatus up to the present time and abnormal information relating to abnormalities occurred in the past are kept and managed, and an operating state of the medical apparatus according to the elapsed time of operation of the medical apparatus and the conditions of occurrence of abnormalities is displayed. According to this technology, a short-term or long-term operating condition maybe displayed. The more the apparatus is complicated, the more the operating conditions are difficult to be figured out at a level of a person in charge, and hence showing by using a chart helps to figure out easily. However, efficiency of the individual procedures is not taken into consideration.